Master of Space and Time Read Online Free Page A

a vast traffic flow to nourish it, a flow that was no longer available in these depressiontimes. Many of the businesses stood empty. Fly-by-night operations flitted in and out of the abandoned rent-free shells like fish in a coral reef.
    COSMO FLEXADYNE!
    PERSONA SCREAM-FLASH!
    BLOOD AND ORGANS BOUGHT AND SOLD!
    FETISH MEGAMART!
    ETHICAL REPROGRAMMING!
    FLESH FISH!
    NORTH JERSEY’S ONLY DOG BUTCHER!
    EXCRETION THERAPY!
    SKIN SHIRTS—WE MAKE OR EAT!
    BAG BODY BOXING!
    STARS ’N’ BARS SURPLUS!
    â€œThere it is.”
    We pulled into the vast empty lot of what had once been a Two Guys discount center. The building was a weathered yellow cube with half an American flag painted on one side. A few robots loitered outside the entrance, standing guard. Jack McCor-mack, the proprietor, was a displaced redneck, deeply suspicious of city folks.
    When we pulled up, Jack had been standing behind the glass doors, watching the traffic. But when he saw Harry and me, he turned and disappeared into the gloomy recesses of his domain.
    â€œPlllease state youuur business,” intoned one of the robots, a squat K-88 with a flare ray bolted to its arm.
    â€œJoseph Fletcher and Harry Gerber, out shopping. Jack knows us.”
    â€œNnnnnegatory. You willl leave the area.”
    â€œCome on, McCormack,” shouted Harry, “you remember us. We built that beam weapon forGeneral Moritz. The thing to make water radioactive?” That had been one of our less successful designs. Harry had lost the plans for the demonstration model, and we’d been unable to duplicate it.
    â€œNnnnnegatory,” hummed the robot, leveling its flare ray. “Therrre willl be no furrrtherrr warnings.” The flare ray looked truly vicious: it was something like a small industrial laser with a superheterodyne unit in back.
    â€œWe’ve got cash !” I screamed. “Two thousand dollars!”
    â€œWell, why dintcha say so?” At the mention of money, the robot’s speaker switched from taped threats to McCormack’s lively drawl. The machine scurried to open the glass doors. “Y’all boys still owes Stars ’n’ Bars right much.”
    â€œThat’s right,” I confessed. “Five hundred dollars, wasn’t it?”
    â€œHot golly, les call it three!” Jack McCormack stepped forward from behind some giant spools of cable. “Assumin y’all boys is really goan spend two kay.” He was a leathery little gnome with hard blue eyes.
    â€œOh, we’ll spend more than that,” said Harry breezily. “Though you should realize, McCormack, that Fletcher & Company qualified for the Emergency Bankruptcy Act of ’95, so that any debts or obligations of the aforesaid corporation are void.”
    â€œYew fat ugly toad. Ah bet yore foreign, ain’t yew?”
    â€œHungarian-American. And, unlike you, with a full command of the English language.”
    Looking at the two short men glaring at each other, one fat, one skinny, I had to laugh. “Look,Jack.” I took out my wallet. “Real cash. Get the truck.”
    McCormack had a small pickup that you could drive around his huge store. The three of us piled in, me in the middle.
    â€œFirst we need a hotshot table,” said Harry.
    â€œGood God!” I exclaimed. “Whatever for?” The hotshot table had been a popular execution device during the early nineties, when capital punishment had made a big comeback. A hotshot table was like a hospital gurney, a bed on wheels, but a bed with certain built-in servo-mechanisms. It was a kind of mechanical Dr. Death, equipped to give fatal brain injections to condemned criminals. Lying down on a hotshot table was like lying down on a black widow’s belly. The needle would stab right down into the top of your head. The point of the thing was that it had helped resolve the AMA’s scruples about helping to kill people. But now capital punishment had